Some thoughts on the game

[Zeke45]

Certainly this game hits the spot on many levels and although I have the GOG version I would review it here as extremely positive, highly recommended. It's just the sort of action-fantasy third-person melee game I look for.

It's extremely derivative, but more or less in a good way. The "Dark Souls" derivations are obvious and, alas, extremely unnecessary. I don't care for the Dark Souls formula but games such as this and Remnant: From the Ashes manage to borrow from it without the punishing aspects which appeal only to masochists or other warped and afflicted mindsets. Fortunately, this game feels the same way about the Dark Souls style of abject self-flagellation as I do. (As does Remnant, among a few other "Souls-likes.")

From this game I get essences of Kingdoms of Amalur, Blades of Time (in a big way), the aforementioned Remnant (particularly for the well conceived boss contrivances), and even shooters such as Strange Brigade. Among many others. Derivative. But in a good way.

The difficulty on "adventure" setting is plenty stringent for a first playthrough. Bosses are actually interesting.

My main gripe is the level scaling which becomes obvious after the early missions, around the time you acquire fast travel and take on the later missions. Here you discover -- despite leveling your character to what should be respectable (if not awesomely powerful) stats -- that even mundane mobs can often one- or two-hit kill you. That needs working on.

Other than that, and aside from some of the rushed storytelling -- kudos.

[aris.indulens]

Originally posted by Zeke45:

My main gripe is the level scaling which becomes obvious after the early missions

Pretty sure every single enemy in game is hand placed, with fixed stats multiplied by zone difficulty, aka bandits in swamps have more stats than bandits in black market.
Nah, the issue with combat is the enemies are too bulletspongey. For awhile I managed stay ahead of the curve by overleveling and focusing Precision.
Unfortunately I hit a brick wall around sewers level. Bigger enemies take 3+ full staff charges to die and there's nothing you can do about it, no way to get stronger. I believe capping Precision at 99 was a mistake, makes the later game unfun.
Now I'm at crystal caves and crystal golems and mantises takes 6+ full staff charges. That's just sadge. Staff is at +10, most blue skill nodes with +5atk have been taken, Hilda is level56 with 967atk, she's getting levels but she's not getting stronger she's only getting fatter, atk has been 900something for many levels now. Feelsbadman.

[LazyAmerican]

Normally I'd agree I hate level scaling...thing is though this game really only has combat going for it and if I'm back tracking through large maps one shotting all the mobs...it's not very fun.